Load bearing garments such as vests and packs are often worn by people who encounter situations where the garment needs to be either partially or completely removed. Such situations include an injury to the wearer where access needs to be gained to the site of the injury, often times under the garment, where the weight of the garment and supplies/equipment have become an encumbrance, for example on the battlefield. The garment may also become engaged with another item inhibiting movement of the vest wearer thereby necessitating partial or total removal of the garment. Such garments may be used for carrying equipment, supplies and/or armor. So called cutaway vests are known in the industry, and provide an improvement over non cutaway vests, at least in certain regards. Such a vest may be found in U.S. Pat. No. 7,047,570 which provides an advance in the art by having a quick release mechanism that permits quick jettisoning of the vest in separate components wherein the front panel and rear panel can separate from one another. While providing an advance in the art, complete separation of the vest into separate components for removal is not always necessary or desirable, particularly on the battlefield where both the wearer and the medic attending to the wounded wearer of the garment are subject to hostile fire. Additionally, such vests, to provide efficiency in manufacture and inventory control, should be adjustable within ranges for size adjustment for different wearers, by providing adjustment at the shoulders for height and by providing adjustment for waist size to better accommodate different wearers, comfort levels and perhaps different types of clothing to be worn under the vest.
While such a cutaway vest has provided an advance in the art of vest design, reassembly after cutaway can be problematic and time consuming. It can take several minutes to reassemble a vest for wearing which may exacerbate a situation in which a wearer is using the vest such as in a hostile fire environment.
It would therefore be desirable to provide an alternative vest design, which permits easy to effect alternative rigging configurations, one for remote quick release of the vest from a wearer while maintaining the parts connected and while permitting size adjustment in a simple and effective manner, and one for manual release of the garment. There is also a need for a vest having additional armor carrying capability to enhance the user's safety without having to make major modifications to current garment constructions.
Thus, there is a need for an improved vest or other form of releasable garment.